Anonymous sources

Despite promises to curtail it, the LAT published this morning a front page Halloween scare story based on anonymous sources about the danger of an unintentional clash between U.S. and Iranian forces in Iraq, and the potential danger that such a clash could escalate into full fledged war. It could be a true story, but then it could be a figment of a reporter's imagination. The sources might be high level people with knowledge of the subject. Then again, they could be clerks or secretaries or mid-level people anxious to get in the newspaper. If the newspaper had named its sources, readers could evaluate the sources and decide whether or not to believe the story. The LAT would surely argue that they should be trusted. If the newspaper did not have a bias, that might be possible.

Choices are easy for LAT

In testimony before the Senate judiciary panel, the nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, said that if water-boarding is torture then it is illegal, but he also said he didn't know if it's torture. Seems reasonable. He's a judge who sits behind a desk most of the time. What could he know about water-boarding. That doesn't bother LAT editorial writers though, who also mostly sit around. They think they're experts on water-boarding -- after all, they've read all the blogs. Mukasey was right to withhold judgement until he learns more about the subject, perhaps by observing it.

LAT on Christian right

The LAT editorializes this morning, arguing that the Christian right is shooting itself in the foot by insisting that it can only support anti-abortion presidential candidates. You wonder what the purpose of this editorial was. Was the LAT trying to help these Christians by giving them good advice? Nah. The LAT says it's pleased that these Christians are taking that position. Maybe the LAT sees the Christian right as an easy target, like President Bush and Blackwater.

O. C. Register found a smoking gun, sort of

In an editorial today, the Orange County Register says it found something in court documents of a case involving Quest Communications that suggests the government may have pressured Quest to provide customer call records to the NSA before 9/11. The problem is, the "something" was a mere allegation which the government denied. The Register admits it may mean nothing. So why base an editorial on it?

The Register is anxious to prove that the Bush administration violated the law or the constitution when it authorized the NSA's electronic surveillance program and claims that Americans' telephone calls and e-mail messages may have been intercepted without a warrant. But no American has thus far said his or her calls or messages have been intercepted. Until that happens and is proven to have happened, the Register and others are tilting at windmills.

LAT sop to Turks

Apparently to take the pressure off the lunatic congressional Democrats, who propose to stick their collective finger in the collective eye of our allies the Turks, the LAT this morning chastises President Bush and General Petraeus for not doing more to help Turkey wipe out the PKK in northern Iraq. The LAT wants the U.S. to join Turkey in a military adventure under a NATO umbrella aimed at eliminating the PKK. In other words, go ahead with the finger but put some American lives at risk so the Turks won't get mad. Makes sense if it's not your life and you have no qualms about risking others for a political purpose.

LAT's Levey returns

LAT reporter Noam Levey, a Democrat propagandist, hasn't had a byline piece in the newspaper recently, thankfully, but he's back today with a piece about a Republican congressman from North Carolina who is about to lose his seat because he no longer votes with his party on national security issues. Levey seems to think that the congressman is being treated unfairly and the LAT seems to think it's front page news. Both are twisted views of routine reactions by constituents to votes the congressman has taken.

Levey also laments the decision of Chuck Hagel not to seek reelection to the Senate. Hagel has lost the confidence of the people he represents. Why should he return to the Senate?

LAT applauds divorce

The LAT argues today in an editorial that Americans should be more like the French, a sentiment that appeals to the left. Today's subject is the divorce of Nicholas and Cecilia Sarkozy,which the LAT claims is a good thing, about which the French people seem to be unconcerned. Why the LAT should feel the need to applaud divorce isn't clear.

The law of the land

The LAT, in an editorial today titled as above, argues that the U.S. Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the "law of the land." Well, duh. Who is arguing otherwise?

The LAT editorial refers to a court case concerning capital punishment for a Mexican national in which the State of Texas and the Bush administration are on opposite sides. The LAT agrees with the Bush administration but you wouldn't know it from reading the editorial.

LAT on SCHIP

Lacking confidence in arguments based on the merits of the Democrats' efforts to expand SCHIP, the LAT today devotes its editorial to denigrating opponents of the Democrats' plan. The LAT stoops to name calling (saying President Bush is bullheaded,) ridiculing (saying the GOP presidential candidates offer only "facile bromides about 'free markets,'") and threatening (against Republican congressmen who oppose the Democrat bill,) hardly an honorable or fair way to debate a serious issue.

LAT aims both barrels at Mukasey

The LAT's editorial writers join the news staff in suggesting questions for Judge Mukasey. In theory, there is a Chinese fire wall between news and opinion, but not at the LAT.

LAT on Mukasey

LAT reporter Richard Schmitt today offers senators on the judiciary committee a series of question to ask Judge Mukasey in confirmation hearings that are scheduled to begin today. You'd think it isn't a reporter's job to suggest questions but instead to report on questions asked and answers given. But LAT reporters see their duty differently.

LAT wrong on facts

In an editorial today, the LAT states unequivocally that the NSA has wiretapped Americans. Which American has been wiretapped by NSA? No one has stepped forward to say that his or her phone or e-mail has been tapped. The LAT ought to be more careful about what it asserts without proof.

O. C. Register poor-mouths the military

The Orange County Register whines today about (a) the use of reserves and National Guard in Iraq, (2) stop loss orders, (3) wear and tear on equipment and (4) a shortage of firing range bullets -- all because of the Iraq war. Poor babies. What if it was World War II and people had to give up tires, gasoline and beef and all the healthy men between ages 18 and 39 were in the military. Then whining would be justified.

Arnold's veto pen

The LAT reports today that Arnold vetoed 22 percent of the 965 bills that the legislature presented to him. Incredible.

Credit to the LAT, today only

Today's opinion pages include a piece by Niall Ferguson arguing that the House's resolution on Armenian genocide amounts to posturing and is irresponsible, and a piece by James Kirchick claiming liberals ought to give Clarence Thomas a break. If only this were a trend.

LAT: Pollution on the hoof

According to the LAT today, livestock emissions are a leading source of greenhouse gasses. Is the LAT serious? Surely this editorial is a spoof. Nah, the LAT editors don't have that kind of humor, or any at all.

LAT on unlawful combatants

LAT reporter Julian Barnes writes today that Blackwater and other civilian security firms operating in Iraq may be considered unlawful combatants under international law, the same as suicide bombers, roadside bombers and snipers. The issue is unresolved according to an anonymous official within the Defense Department, the LAT says.

Practically speaking, there is an enormous difference between a man or several men (or women) engaged in protecting a State Department official and a roadside or suicide bomber. But there can be no doubt that someone will argue that they are the same. Such an argument shouldn't be allowed to carry the day.

And, the LAT shouldn't quote an anonymous official except in unusual circumstances. In this case, the anonymous official likely has a motive for speaking with a LAT reporter. Likely, that motive isn't a positive one.

Terrorist surveillance or eavesdropping

The LAT argues this morning that Bush must "come clean" about how much privacy Americans are sacrificing in the war on terror. The phrase itself suggests something nefarious has happened. The LAT and most liberals undoubtedly believe that's the case but so far no American has come forward to report that his or her private communications have been intercepted by NSA.

The LAT ignores that for the NSA terrorist surveillance program to be effective it must be secret. It should be obvious that if a terrorist knows his phone calls or e-mails are being intercepted by NSA that he will stop communicating in that way. It should be obvious that if what the NSA is doing is revealed to all Americans that it also will be revealed to terrorists.

A way must be found to continue the NSA's critical program -- the object of which is to protect Americans and America's allies -- without revealing the program's details. (Too much already has been revealed, thanks to the NYT.) The administration has revealed to the intelligence committees and Congressional leadership the details of the program. That should be sufficient.

Arnold's sore arm

The Orange County Register reports today in an editorial that California's governator has so far signed 454 bills and vetoed 41. He has 470 additional bills to consider before Sunday night or they automatically become law. That's a total of 965 bills and that's ridiculous.

The House v Turkey

Congressman Tom Lantos appeared on the NewsHour tonight and tried to explain his committee's action in accusing Turkey of Armenian genocide nearly 100 years ago. It didn't help. He had no coherent explanation. His committee was just meddling. Pelosi is responsible because she could have blocked it but chose not to, again demonstrating poor judgment.

Grassley on the AMT

Senator Chuck Grassley has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal arguing that the AMT ought to be repealed regardless of the Democrat "paygo" rules. All he says is true. The income that the AMT produces for the federal government is like booze to an alcoholic. The alcoholic thinks he can't do without the booze. Congress thinks the government can't do without the AMT. Both are wrong. The cure for both is to quit cold turkey.

Democrat meddlers

Democrats seem to be compulsive meddlers. A Democrat legislature in California puts more than 900 bills on the governor's desk in one year. But they couldn't pass a budget on time. In Washington, a Democrat House proposes an anti-Turkey resolution concerning events that happened 90 years ago. It serves only to antagonize an ally in the war on terror. But the Democrat Congress has yet to pass a budget for the fiscal year that began October 1. Instead of doing the work they are paid to do, Democrats are meddling.

Michael Gerson: Why Fight For Anyone's Freedom?

Michael Gerson has a piece in today's WaPo that shouldn't be missed. It's a superb defense of Bush's democracy agenda.

Larry Sabato on the constitution

Larry Sabato says we need a new constitution but the reasons he gives in an opinion piece in today's LAT aren't sufficient to make the sale. In fact, of the four ideas he mentions none seem likely to gain majority support. Sabato needs something better if he expects people to agree to a constitutional convention, where anything could happen and probably would.

California's prolific legislature

The LAT says in an editorial today that the governator has 900 bills on his desk to either sign or not sign by Oct 14th. It's time the legislature had a time out, maybe for a year, maybe two. It would be interesting to see what would happen if they stayed home instead of going to Sacramento. It's a reasonable bet that California would be just fine without them.

Republican debate

Some Republican presidential candidates seem to think the U.S. has an awful lot of problems. Those candidates don't deserve to be nominated and can't be elected. The Gipper must be turning over in his grave.

LAT applauds Brits drawdown

The LAT argues today in an editorial that the U.K. decision to withdraw 2,500 of its troops from southern Iraq is proof that the U.S. should withdraw all of its. It makes a lot of sense if you think like LAT editors. According to the LAT, Bush's coalition of the willing, which once totaled 34 countries, has collapsed. They once said it wasn't a real coalition because it didn't include France and Germany. The facts change or the LAT reinterprets them. That way, they prove whatever the LAT wants them to prove.

LAT promotes Hillary, trashes Blackwater, again

The theme of today's newspaper seems to be: elect Hill, convict Blackwater. A story by Janet Hook and Mark Barabak seems to suggest that Hill's election is inevitable. Stories by Tina Susman offer testimony by Iraqis that Blackwater SUVs force other vehicles off roads and Blackwater troops fire indiscriminately into crowds, killing innocent Iraqis. The question is whether this testimony is reliable. For five or six years, U.S. military reports of terrorists killed or captured in Iraq have differed from Iraqi reporting on the same incidents. U.S. military reporting has generally been good in other parts of the world -- at home, in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Kosovo, etc. That suggests that Iraqi reporting may be substandard.

The FBI has been sent to Iraq to investigate the September 16th incident in which 11 (Iraqis now say 17) were killed by Blackwater security guards in a shootout following explosion of a roadside bomb. People should wait until the FBI has finished that investigation before drawing conclusions about whether Blackwater was at fault.

And tries to rehabiltate Che

A front page piece by Patrick McDonnell in the LAT tells of the legend of Che and his rehabilitation in Bolivia and Cuba and other parts of the world. Why a piece on Che? Leftist still love him, irrationally so.

LAT trashes Blackwater again

LAT reporter Paul Richter writes this morning that everybody always knew Blackwater was bad but they took the easy way out and ignored the problem. The story is based partly on anonymous or fictitious sources and partly on the testimony of a woman named Janessa Gans who Richter describes as an official in Iraq for two years. What that means is any one's guess. However, a little Googling indicates that she was a political officer in the U. S. embassy in Baghdad from 2003 to 2005, apparently a relatively low-level position. It also indicates that she is an activist, an opponent of U.S. policy in Iraq, an opponent of Israel and a proponent of Jimmy Carter's views on Israel, Palestine and perhaps everything else. A news article based on testimony of a partisan like Janessa Gans ought to include testimony of equal weight from a partisan on the opposite side of the issue. Otherwise, the article must be considered opinion instead of news and should appear in the opinion pages of the newspaper.

Peggy Noonan on presidential candidates

In this week's column, Peggy Noonan says she likes the look on Barack Obama's face when he's thinking, which is unlike the look on Hillary Clinton and President Bush when they're speaking lines written for them by staff. She likes Joe Biden because he's been ahead of his peers recently on Iraq, she says, specifically mentioning his tripartite thinking (which set off demonstrations against the concept in Iraq by Iraqis, who believe Iraq is theirs to screw up if anybody does.) She likes Chris Dodd because he's sophisticated. Her main point though, is she's tired of Bushes and Clintons and wants a change.

Of her points, the last is the only one that makes much sense. Offering ideas extemporaneously is good in classroom debates and Toastmasters meetings. In presidential campaigns, offering ideas that have been debated and considered and tested is better. Joe Biden has offered the same tripartite idea nobody has been buying for five years or more. But his principal failing is that he can't just stop talking. Silence is golden sometimes in debates and negotiations. Chris Dodd is an empty suit but he looks good.

WaPo's lack of class

It's one thing for a left-wing blogger or a communist street demonstrator to charge the president with lying without supporting evidence or facts. It's another for a major newspaper, supposedly respectable, or a columnist of such a newspaper, to do the same. WaPo columnist Eugene Robinson did that in a column yesterday about SCHIP. WaPo not only published it but promoted it.

WaPo, NYT and LAT could be helping to raise the level of discourse. Instead, they're wallowing in the trough with the rest of the swine.

LAT tells Apple how to do business

In an editorial today, the LAT offers Apple some unsolicited advise. Apple ought to be like Nokia, says the LAT. Next thing you know, the LAT will be urging Henry Waxman to investigate Apple.

Morrison on Blackwater

In an irrational and emotional piece in today's opinion pages, LAT columnist Patt Morrison attacks Blackwater for, among other things, soliciting work from the office of California's governator. She says she was "stopped cold" when she learned that contractors sometimes do work for governments that she always thought was done by police officers and citizen-soldiers.

It's just guard duty. There have always been privately employed guards. They free soldiers to fight wars and police to pursue and arrest criminals and enforce laws. Liberals are losing it over Blackwater.

LAT: Bush insane

In an editorial today, the LAT argues that the Bush administration should be offering asylum to more Iraqis, and that its failure to do so up to now is insane. The LAT closes with: "If Bush won't end this cynical, heartless and self-defeating U.S. policy of delay, Congress should." This is the LAT's interpretation of Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people."

Eugene Robinson on NewsHour

On tonight's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson offered his interpretation of Justice Clarence Thomas's new autobiography. Mostly by innuendo and insinuation, Robinson suggested, without saying it, that Thomas is a little off balance mentally, a little confused. This, in Robinson's view, explains why Thomas is such a poor fit on the Supreme Court and is such a disaster for blacks generally. But Robinson, too, has a history and his history makes him an inappropriate analyst for Clarence Thomas.

LAT does journalism

Today on page one, column one, the LAT prints a story by reporter Robyn Dixon about a white Zimbabwean farmer who is trying to exist in a country run by a totalitarian socialist dictator named Robert Mugabe. It's a compelling piece written by an obviously talented writer and it's enlightening in two ways. First, it demonstrates what the LAT could be if it would ween itself off publishing left-wing political propaganda and instead were to concentrate on being a first class journalistic enterprise dedicated to impartial enlightenment. Second, it shows what happens when a government strips people of their property rights. Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, is bankrupt, its money worthless and its people desperate, all because of an English educated African socialist who became Zimbabwe's dictator. There's a lesson there for American socialist in the academy, journalism, environmentalism and politics who believe that they can improve on free market private enterprise capitalism.

Applebaum worries about America's image

Ann Applebaum writes today in the Washington Post expressing concern about other countries and other peoples not liking either Americans or America's government or both. And, she claims it matters because we may need other countries to help us in the event of another war and they may not help us if they don't like us. America isn't liked, she says, because of incompetence, especially in Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She says America isn't liked because people don't like losers.

Unlike most journalists and columnists, she admits that America had a coalition of the willing when it invaded Iraq. She says we couldn't gather such a coalition now.

It's necessary to make a lot of assumptions to go along with her conclusions. First, it must be assumed that America is a loser. Plenty of people in America would take issue with that. Harry Reid would agree but many people would not. America has lost only one war, the war in Vietnam, and isn't losing in Iraq or Afghanistan, despite what Reid might say and has said. Reid is simply wrong.

Then it must be assumed that America is incompetent. This is easier to argue. Mistakes have been made in Iraq, plenty of them. Bush's biggest mistake was in trusting certain generals and a defense secretary too long. But he was smart enough to change course. If you fix your own mistakes are you still incompetent? If you succeed in Iraq, are you still incompetent? Presumably, the jury is still out on the question of competence.

Further, it must be assumed that Applebaum is right in saying that other countries wont help you if they don't like you. But don't other countries do what is in their own interests? Would any country join a losing battle because it liked the losing country, even if it knew it was going to get its butt kicked? Not likely. So Applebaum's assumption is highly doubtful.

Finally, it must be assumed that being liked matters, whatever the reason. The question seems moot because being liked or not liked isn't anything America can control. It shouldn't try.

America, in its history, has done more for the other countries of the world than any other country that ever existed. (World Wars I and II are sufficient proof of that, not to mention the Cold War.) If people still dislike us in spite of that then that is proof of the assertion in the previous paragraph.

Waxman v Blackwater

On the front page of today's LAT, reporter Peter Spiegel writes that investigators working for Congressman Henry Waxman believe that Blackwater has misbehaved in Iraq, threatening or killing Iraqis without justification and then paying off them or their families in order to avoid difficulties with the Iraqi government. The reporter suggests that Waxman's investigators found that the State Department serves as Blackwater's political protector in Iraq.

In a separate LAT article, reporter Alexandra Zavis writes that an Iraqi investigation concluded that Blackwater guards fired without provocation in the September 16th shoot-out that resulted in 11 Iraqi deaths following the explosion of a roadside bomb. But a roadside bomb is a provocation isn't it?

Who are Waxman's investigators and how did they get involved in investigating Blackwater? Isn't that a job for the FBI or the GAO? Who pays Waxman's investigators? Does each congressional committee chairman have a staff of investigators? Isn't the GAO Congress's investigative staff?

LAT equates Petraeus, Swift boat ads

In an editorial today, the LAT claims that Moveon.org's "General Betray Us" ad was no worse than the Swift boat ads during the 2004 presidential election campaign. Here are some differences:

The "General Betray Us" ad denigrated a general, a commander of 160,000 troops fighting a war in a foreign country. The general served in the military for many years, is highly respected and is non-political. And he came home from Iraq to give a Democratic controlled Congress a report they had demanded. No one has provided a fact-based reason why he should not have been received and heard respectfully.

The Swift boat ads concerned a junior officer who served in the Navy only a few months and then denigrated his own service. Many years later, he touted that service in a speech at a political convention with a ridiculous salute and a "reporting for duty" remark. The facts concerning his service are disputed but some aspects are highly suspicious. For example, he received three Purple Heart medals for injuries that occurred in a short time-frame but he was never hospitalized for any of these injuries. This raises questions about the severity of the injuries and the justification for the Purple Heart awards. These three Purple Heart medals got him home early after serving only a minor part of his planned tour of duty in Vietnam. It was hardly a basis for a presidential campaign.